PRICES AND TRADE

503

But the result

paraffin, palm-oil, and silk were all cheaper.1
on balance was that money bought less.

The trade figures from 1905 onwards are somewhat influenced
by this tendency. Reduced to the price-level of 1901, the

1901
1902

1903
1904

870-5
877-6

902-9
922-0

1905
1906
1907

Trade Figures 1901-13

(in £ millions)

1908 . . 1,049-6

I9°9 • • IS094«2

1910 . . 1,212-4

972'5
1,068-5
1,163-7

1911
1912

1913

1*237-0

£1,237 millions of 1911 become £1099-8 millions, and the
£I34°3'5 of I9I3 became £15155-7 millions. They are high
totals even so. Unemployment, as measured in the returns
collected from trade unions by the board of trade, averaged
6 per cent, in the decade 1901-10, as against 5-2 in the decade
1891-1900. But there was no year so bad as 1892, and no
sequence of bad years like 1892-3-4. Subsequently in 1911-12-
13, which were years of marked inflation, employment became
exceedingly good, and the percentages out of work sank to
3-1, 2-3, and 2-6 respectively.

The period was one of much economic controversy, and was
punctuated at unprecedentedly frequent intervals by the issue
of Blue-books and White-papers supplying official data regard-
ing economic conditions at home and abroad. From the last
of these2 the accompanying table is derived, comparing for the

Increases per cent. 1893-1313

United Kingdom
Germany
United States

Population . Goal production . Pig iron Crude steel . Exports of raw materials Exports of manufactures Receipts from railway goods traffic ....
20 75 50 136 238
121
49
32 159 287 522 243 239
141
46
2IO
337 7i5 196 563
146

period 1893-1913 (in some instances 1892-1912) how the
world's three greatest industrial countries had progressed under
1 Gp. Sir Leo Chiozza-Moncy, The Future of Work (1914), 204-7.
* Accounts and Papers, No. 218 of 1914: Agricultural and Trade Development
(United Kingdom) Germany, and United States).